April 25, 2017 — There are millions of really tiny, baby American eels swimming up the Hudson River and it’s an intriguing look at how species migrate like clockwork.

Every spring American Eel are born in the Atlantic Ocean and they migrate to the Hudson River. These eel are almost transparent and that is why they are referred to as “glass eels.” Like many migrations and species in our world, the American Eel is slowly disappearing and the NYSDEC Hudson River Estuary Program is trying to find out what is happening to the glass eel.

I was hanging out by the river in Poughkeepsie last spring and I noticed a bunch of people standing in the Fallkill Creek, which runs into the river by the Children’s Museum. They were catching little eels and putting them in a bucket to study them. It was part of the Hudson River American Eel Project.

April 14, 2017 — For the first time, scientists have recorded a spring fish migration by conducting DNA tests on water samples.

The work was a collaboration of Rockefeller University and the Urban Coast Institute at Monmouth University.

According to the study’s report, environmental DNA called eDNA, collected from one-liter samples drawn weekly from New York’s East and Hudson rivers over six months last year, revealed the presence or absence of several key fish species passing through the water on each test day.

The bits of DNA recovered found the presence of menhaden, herring species, black sea bass, striped bass, tautog (blackfish), mummichog, bay anchovy, bluefish, oyster toadfish, Atlantic silverside, and conger eel. In total it found the presence of 42 species.

Using eDNA is a way to monitor fish migrations that involves a fraction of the effort and cost of trawling, all without harming the fish, the study said.

It also said it can be used to estimate the abundance and distribution of diverse fish species and other forms of marine life in the dark waters of rivers, lakes, and seas.

December 5th, 2016 — When a humpback whale swam all the way to the George Washington Bridge last month, it became a brief media spectacle, with the creature’s massive tail breaching the Hudson River while skyscrapers loomed in the background.

But for some, the whale’s presence also signaled that the Hudson is slowly coming back from decades of pollution. The waterway is indeed healthier than it has been since scientists began recording its demise a century ago from sewage, street runoff and industrial pollution, all of which have been curbed substantially in recent decades.

“People need to change their perception of these waters,” said Debbie Mans, executive director of the NY/NJ Baykeeper, a clean water advocacy group. “It has taken a lot of time, but it has slowly improved.”

Most experts think the whale, nicknamed Gotham, was probably drawn up the Hudson in late November by schools of small bait fish called menhaden, or bunker, whose numbers along the Eastern Seaboard have soared in recent years.

Cleaner waters allows plankton to flourish closer to shore. That, in turn, provides a food source for fish like menhaden. And whales like nothing more than to munch on menhaden.

The fish have been so abundant this summer and autumn in the Hudson that Tom Lake, a consulting naturalist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said he saw schools of the fish 128 miles north of Bayonne.

June 13, 2016 — Herring are spawning in a tributary to New York’s Hudson River for the first time in 85 years after a dam was removed from the tributary’s mouth.

The spawning in the Wynants Kill tributary is seen as an environmental success, as NPR’s Nathan Rott tells our Newscast unit. He says it was previously “closed off to fish by a 6-foot dam at the side of an old mill there.” Nate explains:

“With the removal of the dam earlier this month, river herring and other ocean-going fish are making their way up the tributary to spawn. Those fish spend the bulk of their life at sea, but need smaller tributaries off of rivers like the Hudson to spawn and reproduce.”

There are more than 1,500 dams affecting Hudson River tributaries and “there’s a wider push to remove ones that no longer serve their intended purpose,” Nate adds.

“Every dam should have an existential crisis,” said John Waldman, a biology professor at Queens College, tells The Associated Press. “These are artifacts of the Industrial Revolution that are persisting and doing harm.”

March 31, 2016 — FORT EDWARD, NY — Federal agencies are fighting over how quickly the PCB dredging project of the Hudson River by General Electric Co. might someday make the fish once again safe to eat.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is disputing a finding by two other agencies — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — that EPA seriously overestimated by “several decades” how quickly recently-concluded GE river dredging will reduce PCBs in fish to levels fit for human consumption.

On Tuesday, EPA issued a 110-page rebuttal to the NOAA and Fish and Wildlife findings, which were first reported in 2015 and this week published in a peer-reviewed national scientific journal. Last fall, GE wrapped up a six-year dredging project between Fort Edward and Troy, although a coalition of environmental groups and river advocates said too much toxic pollution remains left behind.

EPA claimed less optimistic conclusions on future PCB levels in fish by other federal scientists “are not supported by the full range of available evidence,” according to an EPA statement accompanying its rebuttal.

February 29, 2016 — A joint Federal and State 2015 Juvenile Atlantic Sturgeon Survey shows the highest number of Atlantic sturgeon in the Hudson River in the 10-year history of the survey and the trend of the results show an increasing juvenile sturgeon abundance (see chart below), New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Acting Commissioner Basil Seggos has announced.

“Juvenile Atlantic sturgeon are at the highest level recorded in the Hudson River in the last 10 years. These survey results are an encouraging sign for the recovery of Atlantic sturgeon,” Acting Commissioner Seggos said. “We are cautiously optimistic that, with our continued vigilance and efforts to protect this species, Atlantic sturgeon will have a secure future.”

Commercial fishing rates for Atlantic sturgeon exceeded the ability of the fish to replenish themselves in the late 1980s and early 1990s. New York led the way in conservation through implementation of a harvest moratorium for Atlantic sturgeon in 1996. In 1998, an amendment of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic sturgeon resulted in a coast wide moratorium on Atlantic sturgeon harvest for 40 years and aimed to protect two generations of females in each spawning stock.

October 16, 2015 — SOUTH NYACK, N.Y. — The new Tappan Zee Bridge may be costing us more than originally thought.

Environmentalists are blaming the construction project for killing endangered fish in the Hudson River.

As CBS2’s Lou Young reported, its been around since pre-history, but some are wondering if the Atlantic Sturgeon has finally met its match where the new Tappan Zee Bridge is being built.

The animals, which live an average of 60 years and can grow up to 15 feet in length, spawn in the river and have been turning up dead in what the environmentalists at Riverkeeper say are alarming numbers.

“This is an endangered species. The last published study on Atlantic Sturgeon had a total of 860 mature sturgeon in the Hudson River population,” said Leah Rae, with Riverkeeper.

In all cases, motorboats are being blamed, but the fish float far from the scene of the impact so solving the case is not likely an episode of CSI, Young reported.

September 14, 2015 — Hearings began Monday on a proposal to close the Indian Point nuclear plant for part of each summer to protect fish during spawning season.

About 30 witnesses are expected to testify at hearings at the state Department of Environmental Conservation in Albany.

The DEC estimates that Indian Point’s system for withdrawing and discharging water from the Hudson River kills more than 1 billion fish, eggs and larvae every year.

The hearings will address proposals to shut the plant for 42 to 92 days each summer when fish are spawning.

“We look forward to providing the court with sensible alternatives to the destruction of a shocking percentage of Hudson River fish,” Cristopher Len, Hudson program director for the environmental group Riverkeeper, said in a statement.